I enjoy visiting some Tumblr sites, and Married Lovers (NSFW) is up there in my favorites. The site is a feast of luscious photos: sex, art, nature, food, and cool architecture.

I’m going to try a project on my blog, to post photos along the same lines as the Married Lovers site. What can I say, I’m inspired. But I’m not going to include X-rated photos. There’s already a tremendous amount of porn on the Interwebs, so I’ll choose to focus on celebrating various places and sensual things. Also, I’m going to occasionally post my poetry.

The project will start with places where events happen in my new self-published novel, The Sweet Taste of Revenge — or places which are referred to. Then I’ll move on to other places and things.

I’ll try this project for about a month and see how it goes, then decide if I’ll continue beyond that.

Today’s photo is a view of Philadelphia from Museum of Art, by mbell1975 (Flickr).

I’ve been posting about Bavaria for a couple of weeks, and now it’s time for Berlin. Nope, this city is not in Bavaria — but a few events in my novel Bavarian Beauty take place in Berlin. So I thought it would be neat to show some places in the city where Simon and Gretchen (characters in the novel) go sightseeing.

All of these pics were taken by photographers who put them up on Flickr under a Creative Commons license, to be used for non-commercial purpose and given attribution to them.

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Brandenburg Gate

The Brandenburg Gate was built on the location of a former city gate, and “it was commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia as a sign of peace and built by Carl Gotthard Langhans from 1788 to 1791.” (Quote from Wikipedia.) The arch was damaged during World War II, and it was patched up after Germany’s surrender — but it wasn’t fully restored until 2002.

Werner Kunz (Flickr)

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Unter den Linden

Unter den Linden (“under the linden trees”) is a walkway flanked by rows of — you guessed it — linden trees. The walkway’s western start is the Brandenburg Gate. Buildings along the walkway include the Aldon Hotel, Hungarian Embassy, Russian Embassy, and Humboldt University.

flierfy (Flickr)

Michael (Flickr)

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East Side Gallery

The East Side Gallery is a section of the Berlin Wall that was saved and moved, with “105 paintings by artists from all over the world, painted in 1990 on the east side.” (Quote from the Wiki article.)

Rodrigo SEPÚLVEDA SCHULZ (Flickr)

Jussi Savolainen (Flickr)

Possibly the most photographed portion was painted by Russian artist Dmitri Vrubel, and it’s named, “My God, help me to survive this deadly love.” This painting is based on a photo taken by French photographer Régis Bossu in 1979 of the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German President Erich Honecker kissing (a kiss is supposedly a normal tradition for socialist buds) after a speech given by Brezhnev in celebrating 30 years of East Germany. When Paris Match ran the photo, they included the caption “The Kiss.” You can see the photo on the Iconic Photos blog.

Marta Nimeva Nimeviene (Flickr)

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River Spree (Boat Tour)

grahamc99 (Flickr)

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Reichstag

The Reichstag is where the German Parliament (Bundestag) meets. The original building was completed in 1894, then was severely damaged in a fire in 1933. It wasn’t until Germany reunified that full restoration began, starting in 1990, and architect Norman Foster added the glass dome on top to symbolize the reunification.

Philippe AMIOT (Flickr)

Luke Ratzlaff (Flickr)

Thomas Quine (Flickr)

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U-Bahn

The U-Bahn is short for “Untergrundbahn” (which means “underground railway”), and it’s the public transportation system for getting around Berlin. The photo below is of the Heidelberger Platz platform.

Rae Allen (Flickr)

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Potsdamer Platz

The Potsdamer Platz is a public square in the center of Berlin, among the skyscrapers downtown. The Sony Center includes shops and restaurants, with the space topped with a very cool ceiling made of glass, steel, and sails (designed by Helmut Jahn).